I fail to see that this has anything to do with EC. As I said before, it looks to me like you and Biologos have some differences on how to approach the interface between science and evolution (which is something plenty of people have observed, including me), and that’s the actual point of difference not evolutionary creationism as such.
To me, what you’re saying is like saying Todd Wood is a YEC because he is honest in his representation of the fact that evolution is not a “theory in crisis”, and is supported by a wide range of evidence, but Ken Ham is not YEC, because he claims evolution has no supporting evidence and is a theory in crisis.
Sorry I really don’t see that. This is a public forum, there are people here from a range of different countries, and I really don’t think they’re all carefully using terms only in the way that people in the US use them. What you’re writing just sounds like typical US ethnocentrism.
If EC is BioLogos, and BioLogos is anti-scientific in this way, well that is a big issue for me as a scientist. That is not a side or ancillary issue, nor is it ignorable.
People are here from many different countries, but the fact is that American evangelicalism looms large here. Look at what we’re discussing: Biologos, Ken Ham, Tim Keller, Discovery Institute, William Lane Craig, Southern Baptists. Conversations about materials put forward by the Discovery Institute take up a vast portion of the posts here, which would probably sound very obscure to someone coming from Nigeria or China or Brazil. The people here who are not American (which includes myself) but still talk about these topics learn about them from American sources.
I’m not saying that the American dominance here is a good and desirable thing. It’s just a fact right now. At the moment, we don’t seem to be substantially changing our focus to become more global. As I said, if we really cared about that, then we probably wouldn’t spend so much time responding to the DI.
I have to agree with Joshua on this one. It would seem that it is completely up to BioLogos to move its stance towards de novo creation of Adam/Eve to become more like us … or to stay put on the “figurative” sidelines.
It is my guess that BioLogos will eventually produce the same stance on Adam and Eve… but perhaps they will make a more adamant stance on the fictional nature of a Global Flood. We here at PeacefulScience gloss over that bump in the road… I can see BioLogos doing something more with it.
Actually no. I often address the flood. I deal with it briefly in the book, taking a different approach than Biologos. Of course, they go figurative, but I just go textual. The flood comes up frequently in most my talks. It is just to easy to deal with it isn’t worth a book.
Is there a thread where you treat this? I should read it over (or read it for the first time). I can’t even recall what you have ever said on the Global Flood.
As I understand it, the racism charge derived from the concern over whether or not the pre-Adamic evolved people are considered truly human nor not. If they are, then obviously the racism issue disappears. This is very likely why people who have previously suggested that Adam and Eve were created de novo, while other people evolved and are still considered human, have not been charged with racism.
Perhaps this is the reason why so many people are concerned with you defining exactly what you mean by “human”, and explaining who you consider to be human and non-human.
I don’t think that justifies the claim that every time people use the term “EC” they must necessarily be using it the way one American Christian organization uses it.
I don’t think this is likely to change, since the main aim of this forum is to fix a problem which is present in a narrow spectrum of North American Christianity. Around 60% of people in the US believe humans have evolved, whether entirely without God or with God’s involvement. However, in the US rejection of human evolution is highest among white evangelicals. In contrast, in Australia 80% of the population accepts evolution, whether with or without God. Peaceful Science is addressing a real problem, but it’s mainly a white American evangelical problem. Most Christian groups in the world have long since reconciled themselves with evolution, and there are so many different ways of doing it these days I think GAE is largely getting lost in the sheer range of options out there.
Additionally GAE typically only appeals to people who want to retain a specifically narrow historical interpretation of Genesis 1-3 (people like me, for example), whereas that just isn’t very important to a very large percentage of Christians. So I think these are the main reasons why GAE hasn’t been taken up by a lot of Christians; most of them just don’t have a need for it.
But it isn’t. Biologos is an organization which promotes one EC model, while (nominally), allowing that other EC models could also be legitimate. They are being explicitly non-prescriptive about the term EC, while you are being explicitly prescriptive. If there’s someone looking for a monopoly here, it certainly isn’t them. What you’re going to end up doing is arguing that anyone who identifies with EC necessarily identifies with a dishonest, pseudoscience approach to origins.
This issue is separate from EC, as I illustrated with my YEC example.
I’ve actually always been very direct in how I handle this, and have now written a full book on it. One whole part of the book is titled “human.”
Recall, Venema still argues it is racist. He arrived at this not by what I said or wrote, but by what he insisted on inferring, against my explanations. In fact, he went so far as to finally admit that there was no meaningful difference between Walton and the GAE, but he thought Walton’s model was racist too.
What was going on was different. This is a strategy to silence people and prevent inquiry. The same was done to Opderbeck and Davidson. This was also their reason for never mentioning Kemp. What was going on was that Venema was (and is) on a mission to disprove Adam and Eve, and he was going about it by conflating genetics and genealogies (remember he knew of Opderbeck), and by conflating “human” and Homo sapiens. Rather than being upfront about these distinctions, which he understood perfectly well, he conflated them. When I pointed this out, his back up strategy was to invoke “racism”, because that had worked everytime in the past to shut people up. This time, however, was the first time he attempted this on a non-white person. I did not react the way he expected.
I already granted you see it differently. I don’t. I see them as linked. That is why I reject EC. Perhaps you just have to internally translate EC to BioLogos every time I write it.
Actually my experience with them is having it used very prescriptive against me. By definition, I was told, EC rejects de novo creation of AE. By definition it rejects literalism. By definition, so on and so forth. I know they try and give another impression publicly. I was on the inside. That is not what happened to me on the inside.
Do we really want a theology that names them all as subhuman animals until their lineage happens to encounter and interbreed with Adam’s (Eurasian) offspring? God forbid. Likely this was not Swamidass’s intent, of course, but it seems to me that models like these lead to this decidedly unsavory conclusion.
And I don’t see him calling you a racist either. I think he’'s making a poor slippery slope argument, but I don’t see him calling you a racist. I do think he’s trying to tar baby your position however, in a completely unjustifiable way.
Well I can only go on what they’re saying publicly. When Behe says he’s EC, and Biologos agrees, but you say Behe isn’t, then I don’t think the problem is with Biologos.
Sure. That is what I mean. He did not call ME a racist, he is poisoning the well with a claim that this inevitably leads to racist theology. This is also what Deb Haarsma repeated to me. This is one reason they kicked me out. Once again, studiously ignoring every answer I gave them.
Except, he actually ignored entirely what I had written about this, and chose to avoid all conversation with me to clarify before, during and after this. It was an intentional smear.
Where did Behe say he is EC? As I understand it, he rejected the term for himself. He said it is inherently opposed to detecting God’s action. I imagine he does not apply the term to himself.
Thanks, I saw him cited as an evolutionary creationist by William Lane Craig, so I thought that was how Behe self-identifies. However, I’ve just read an article by Behe in which he presents his own definition of EC, a definition with which Biologos disagrees.
This is what Biologos says about EC.
EC requires common ancestry.
As I’ve described EC, it requires the acceptance of common ancestry. If you don’t affirm common ancestry, then you can’t be an EC.
EC is incompatible with a young earth (~10,000 years).
The science of evolutionary theory is incompatible with that timescale, and since ECs accept that science, we could not logically accept a young earth.
EC allows for (but does not require) a historical Adam and Eve.
There are some ECs who believe that Adam and Eve were real people who served as representatives for all of humanity, and other ECs who believe that Adam and Eve are literary characters (like the Prodigal Son) and do not name any actual individuals in human history. BioLogos neither requires nor rejects a historical Adam and Eve, and aims instead to foster constructive dialogue.
Your position fits well inside their definition of EC.
The claim is that the a de novo Adam and Eve have no parents, so therefore they do not share common ancestry. So therefore, by definition, it is excluded from EC.
On GAE BioLogos has torpedoed constructive dialogue at every opportunity.
An interesting debate. If I understand correctly it is similar to pointing out that the swastika goes back to at least 500BC. However I think only a very naive person would paint a swastika on something they owned and be surprised if people had a very negative reaction to it. The Nazi party did not invent the swastika but in most peoples minds they have forever tainted it. So while it is technically correct to say that Biologos did not invent the term EC, it is also fair to say that using it now invites being associated with them? And it is that association which Joshua wishes to avoid?
In New Zealand it is not illegal, but is considered highly offensive. Obviously I am not comparing biologos to the nazi party. Just pointing out the origin of a symbol or label is not always the same as the current popular perception, and the current popular perception is probably the most influential.
I know it might seem incredible, but outside the US hardly anyone knows about Biologos. You have to remember that North American evangelicals are a tiny sector of Christianity, and that most Christians live outside the US. I was introduced to the term evolutionary creationism in the 1990s, and didn’t know about Biologos until nearly 20 years later. This isn’t the same as the swastika.
In North America, yes. In the rest of the world, it depends. Here in Asia, everyone naturally associates a swastika with Buddhism, and many people don’t know a Nazi swastika is even if they see one. Many people out here weren’t taught about the Nazi atrocities or the Holocaust. In fact several countries out here were under Japanese occupation at the time, and only know the Nazis as allies.
